I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend, or what is left of it. My life has pretty much consisted of working this week, with the exception of one night out on Thursday. So I'll touch on an area where things are REALLY happening, and that is SPACE!

This last week the Russians sent up a rocket with three folks aboard, so that doubled the size of the crew of the ISS. It was nice to see Mark Kelly get some more visitors (he's the American astronaut who is spending a year on the ISS). The rocket took off fine, and within a few hours the newbies were floating around inside the space station.

Things have been a bit depressing over at the ESA (European Space Agency). They put their Rosetta probe in orbit around a comet, then sent a lander (Philae) down to the nucleus of the comet to land. Well, it bounced, and came down in a dark area so its batteries drained. Didn't hear from it for months, then a couple of weeks ago it woke up, much to everyone's delight. But now it seems all is not well for the lander, as its transmissions are very sporadic. They are not sure what is going on, but it could have much to do with the very volatile nature of what is going on with that comet. As it gets closer to the Sun, it is getting more and more active. That poor lander might be getting knocked around by jets of steam, boulders rolling around--who knows? With the spotty communications, they aren't really able to get a fix on what the problem is. It has been a roller coaster ride, to be sure.

But then the big success story of the month just keeps on trucking--the New Horizons space probe continues to send data back to Earth from its fly-by of the dwarf planet Pluto. The had their weekly press conference on Friday, and the big announcement was that they believe they are seeing glaciers on Pluto. There is a huge store of Nitrogen (probably beneath the surface) that is upwelling in one area, and it is creeping into other areas--making for some really beautiful markings on Pluto's surface. Pluto has not failed to impress--it seems there are surprises around every bend on that icy planetoid!

And lastly, another program held a press conference on Thursday, and that was for the Kepler Space Telescope mission. This is a small scope in orbit that is being used to try to locate exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than our own Sol). This press conference yielded two big announcements. One, that they have discovered a planet (Kepler 452b) one and a half times bigger than Earth, but orbiting in the same location as Earth and around a star very similar to our Sun! This marks the closest we have seen to an Earth-like planet out there. They figure that this place would most likely have liquid water, rocky lands, and even active volcanoes. In fact, if we were to load up an Ark with plants and animals, the plants would probably grow there. The second announcement was talking about the automation they have been able to employ in going through the Kepler data. When they launched the Kepler six years ago, they were hoping to find evidence of planets orbiting some of the stars out there. Well, what this automation has yielded is a surprise. Not only are we finding planets orbiting some of the stars out there, but just about ALL of them! And they figure that in around 15 to 20 percent of the systems they have found have planets that we call "Earth-like." This just means rocky (as opposed to the gas giants) and in a zone with regard to the host star that would result in surface temperatures that could support life as we know it.

That last part really blew me away. As a kid, I used to gaze out at the sky and wonder if there were any planets out there. Now I can look at the sky and know that most every pinpoint of light I see probably has something orbiting around it! So it just stands to reason that the chances are pretty good that there is some intelligent life out there somewhere in all that! And the funny thing is, as we look out there, we are looking back in time. Depending on how far away the star is, we are seeing it from an earlier date. So if a star is 2,000 light years away, we are seeing things there as they were back when Jesus was a kid! And this new planet we discovered--Kepler 452b--if someone were on that planet with a very strong telescope, and they trained it on Earth...they are 1400 light years away, so they would be seeing us as we were back in the year 615 a.d.!! Kind of boggles the mind...

SO all the spacey things aside, I did manage to do one other fun thing this week. Mary and I went down to San Jose to attend a Rush concert! We got tickets for this thing months ago, and it may well be the last time we will get to see them live. They have hinted at quitting before, but I am beginning to think they are serious about it this time. The show was a look back in time, from their latest material and working back to their beginning. And several times in the show they thanked all their fans for 40 years of support. That sure is a long time! That's how long they have been together and cranking out great music. So it was a bittersweet concert, but we had a great time! And at some point I hope to be able to hear normally again. (Yes, it was really loud! We even put plugs in our ears to cut down the high frequency volume, and it was still very loud.)

So that's about it for me! This week is going to be a bit crazy as I have until the end of the month to get my project for the Quaker school done. So it is a race to the finish.

Anyway, I hope to see you next weekend, as we get together for the latest VacaChat!